European Sociological Review, Vol. 4 No. 3, December 1988 © Oxford University Press 1988 249 The relationship between objective and subjective social stress indicators: some Israeli findings SIMHA F. LANDAU ABSTRACT The present study addresses the question of whether objectively defined social stressors are subjectively perceived as stressful. This question is investigated on the aggregate level with regard to economic and security-related stress factors. The objective economic stressors considered are inflation and unemploy- ment and the objective security-related stressors are security-related casualties and incidents. Subjective perceptions of social stress are conceived here as expressions of worry or dissatisfaction regarding the above life domains. The data regarding the ten subjective indicators included in this study were derived from continuing surveys of representative samples of the urban Israeli Jewish population during the years 1967-1985. The periods covered range from six to almost 14 years. The hypotheses of the study were generally supported by the findings. Both economic and security-related stress indicators were positively related to their subjective counterparts. However, the relationships of subjective indicators of general (unspecified) stress to the above two types of objective stressors were rather inconclusive. The implications of thefindingswith regard to future research on objective and subjective stress indicators are discussed. INTRODUCTION The last two decades have witnessed an increas- ing interest in the development of both objective and subjective social indicators (see among others Andrews and Inglehart, 1979; Andrews and Withey, 1976; Cantril, 1965; Levy and Guttman, 1975; Stone, 1982). The main focus of interest of students of the social indicators movement is 'quality of life' (also called by some researchers 'well being' or 'human con- cerns'). The most commonly employed types of indicators are the objective ones. These indicators are based mainly on census data and other governmental reports which are utilized to assess the quality of life in a given geographical unit (city, state, country, etc.). These measures relate to areas such as housing, health, edu- cation, income, employment as well as the extent of deviant and criminal behavior (i.e. rates of property crime, crimes of violence, suicides, narcotic addiction, etc.) (Schneider, 1975). The subjective social indicators of quality of life are based on attitudinal survey data relating to subjective satisfaction in a variety of life domains, such as community of residence, local government, security of property, cost of living, job opportunities, etc. (Wasserman and Chua, 1980). Objective social stress indicators have been utilized quite extensively in recent years in criminological research, their effects being measured on crime patterns in general and on violent crime in particular (for reviews of the literature, see among others, Belknap, 1985; Freeman, 1983; Long and Witte, 1981; Nettler, 1982, 1984; Newman, 1979; Orsagh and Witte, 1981). The general approach of the studies in this field has been to investigate (on the aggregate level) the relationship between violent crime and objective stress measures such as unemployment, income inequality, inflation, population density as well as wars and more prolonged states of belligerence (Archer and Gartner, 1984; Brenner and Swank, 1986; Krahn et al., 1986; Krohn, 1976; Landau and Pfeffermann, 1988; Landau and Raveh, 1987; Messner and Tardiff, 1986; Shoham, 1985; Smithies, 1982; Stack, 1986; and many others). Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/esr/article/4/3/249/530656 by guest on 02 August 2023